Archive for the The Reading Room Category

So for today’s 30 min rant we shall talk about why I haven’t done a 30 min rant since I promised to.

1. The internet died. No, really. For some reason our ISP decided to change something that identifies us to them to connect us, didn’t tell us and so no internet for a few days.

2. Storyline, deadline. No amount of 30 minute babble was going to help with what was essentially a basic structure issue with little prose … well that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.

For the last week I’ve been wrestling with the feedback I received for my feature outline. To start with I HATE what I am writing right now. I really wanted to write a zombie film and came up with a couple of secondary ideas that I was a bit luke warm about to add to the pitching session because we had to come up with three of them.

Turns out, everyone latched onto the one I had made up an hour before class and so it became my feature. It’s a film about rugby.

Yes. I know.

anyway, there have been a couple of twists and turns along the way – at one stage the story was a satire about the commercialism of the sport and then it was about two brothers and their rivalry.

One tutor, pushed me to have something complete as a story line, a new tutor has pushed me into looking at the truth of a character. I’m unhappy with the results from both.

Firstly, yes, I now have an awesome character who I really like, but somewhere in creating him, I’ve lost what has left me really interested in the story and gone for something else. Now I feel I have to fight a little for my voice, which I guess is part of the learning process, but it is incredibly frustrating all the same. Especially when a rough draft of the script is due at the end of this week … yup it will be another all nighter for me on Thursday, I think.

Not being in love with this script is driving me insane. As it is, my mind has started wandering to other projects – I’ve now got a few ideas for some film and television, another couple of scripts that I want to start getting into and even found a solution to dirty creatures (I really do have a thing about zombies) … I chose to stick with this project as a lesson in just completing something. We all know how difficult that has been for me in the last couple of years.

At the same time, this screenplay is meant to serve as my spec script to send out when I start looking for an agent after school is over – I want it to be a fair representation of what I can do so I can get more work out of it. I don’t want to create something that is something I never intend on writing again.

In a sense it’s a good thing this isn’t the zombie film or the t.v. murder series, Shakespeare adaptation or even a film version of dirty creatures – we all know that these screenplays are the ones that will never get made and I really want to make my zombie film.

And on that note, my 30min are up (with some disruptions to plug in my mac and turn on the telly) … time to find my way.

Something for the Reading Room: A great summary from a writing event in LA. My favourite bit is this:

“Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, in response to a question about the script being his first produced screenplay, told the audience that he’d written more than 15 other scripts. “I’d heard that Oliver Stone wrote 20 before he got produced, so I”m ahead”

When the demise of your government has become such a spectator sport that it’s being live blogged, it may be time to think about your post parliament plans.

Or you could continue sitting in your office with your fingers stuffed into your ears singing ‘la la la la laaaaaa, I can’t hear you!’ – that’s pretty much what the NZ Labour Party did in it’s final year and that went really well for them too.

We all know that the recent “election” in Zimbabwe is a farce. No, it’s beyond a farce and I struggle to see why Mbeki seems unable to condemn Mugabe which seems to be what the world is waiting for before they do anything – why? I’m sure one of you will be able to tell me …